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Taehyun met first Beomgyu three hundred years ago. He had fired a bullet into his chest and watched as his doe-like eyes widened, and through the rip in Beomgyu’s shirt, Taehyun saw the skin heal over itself.
“You absolute bastard,” Beomgyu had growled, shooting through Taehyun’s acquaintances and then finally landing a hit through his heart. Taehyun had stumbled back as the metal ripped through him, felt the piercing of his skin by the bullet and the way it tightened right after to heal itself.
“You’re like me,” Beomgyu breathed.
Taehyun had nodded. “We’re the same.”
* * *
They were not the same, Taehyun had soon found out. Beomgyu was erratic in the worst of ways, while Taehyun was neurotically prompt and concise. They were the worst they could be and the best for each other. Taehyun hadn’t realized how lonely he had become roaming the Earth, participating in history but being unable to participate in his own life. He felt like an extra character in a play, ready to be put into the thick of battle but never amounting to much. He was a ghost, and it took only a single touch from Beomgyu to feel real once again.
* * *
“Strange how art has changed,” Beomgyu muses.
“It really is,” Taehyun mutters. It’s quick, and it bothers him. He’s seen how everything has changed, how popular art forms have gone in and out, from proud statues of Grecian heroes and gods to murals and reliefs to modernism (which he’s still not sure he understands).
Art has changed so much, but it’s always been something tangible. Taehyun? He’ll never be able to leave behind a legacy, never have anything to claim as a testament to his existence. His biggest impact on the world is the man now staring into his eyes with a worried look.
“My love, art has shifted to reflect the times. And you, too, are a masterpiece.” Beomgyu puts a hand over Taehyun’s heart. “All the tales you will ever need to tell are inside you. You are the walking testament to your own life.”
Beomgyu always knows how to soothe him like this, and Taehyun will never get tired of it. Sometimes Beomgyu pulls poetry out of thin air onto his lips, where his gentle words breathe life into the spun sugar of the art resting along his tongue. Taehyun’s never gotten to be so full of life that he outshines the other humans like Beomgyu does, and he’s desperate for a taste, pulling Beomgyu into his arms at the center of the art gallery and kissing his eternally soft lips. He hears the other visitors gasp at the two men so publicly showing their affection.
Taehyun smiles against Beomgyu. If there were one thing to be had as a laudable artistic skill, he thinks, it should be this: using his tongue to paint Beomgyu as his own, to leave marks of love on a canvas so angelic that it could save one’s soul at the last breath.
In these moments, Taehyun counts himself lucky that he’ll never breathe his final breath, not for a long time.
* * *
Beomgyu is adaptable. When they first met Beomgyu had inserted himself into revelries of a few young Jacobin after the hanging of a noble. He’d never particularly agreed with the the way the French Revolution had played out, but the both of them had done what was necessary to survive on the continent, only leaving for Asia again on a boat a few decades later.
Beomgyu had made entire countries his home very quickly, becoming acquainted with the commonfolk and with just enough upper-middle class people to sneak the both of them into high-society parties through back doors and connections he’d made through whispers.
He loved and cherished people. When their friends slowly started to pass away with time, one after another, they took a piece of Beomgyu with them. Taehyun was never really sure what to do then, how to console Beomgyu when his exterior shattered. All he could do, and would always do, was pick the pieces back up and press them back to his love as gently as he could.
* * *
The 21st century is... different. It’s like every century before smashed into another and surged forward, with people so involved with aesthetic that they don’t consider the history of where such looks came from. Taehyun finds it a little willfully ignorant of people to, say, use Victorian-era colors and dresses willfully without considering the plight of the people at that time.
Beomgyu always gets him out of his own head, though. “Must you be so entrenched in the past?” He laughs.
“I must be if the the past is my life’s story,” Taehyun responds, eyeing the “20th-century themed” wallpaper in the coffee shop they’re at. This place could never match up to the real thing. It was an imitation, a forgery of an era, and he could never really feel at ease with being forced to travel backwards in time with just a few steps through a doorframe.
“These people take pride in their past, Taehyun,” Beomgyu says. He drops a hand to Taehyun’s leg and squeezes lightly. “It’s all static, just historical facts, when they haven’t lived through it. It’s a small comfort to be able to escape back in time, to a place where you never existed, for a small while. Grant them that comfort.”
And Taehyun does because he understands it the way Beomgyu says it. Modern people might find solace in a static past, and Taehyun finds comfort in the only static thing he has: Beomgyu, the man who’s been by his side through centuries.
* * *
When the ancient gods come to collect their souls for the deals they had made so carelessly hundreds of years ago, Taehyun makes another bargain. He has thought about this one for decades now, but has never questioned it.
Taehyun knows what the price is for making an unnatural deal, for giving up his mortal soul for material things. They’ll both be sent to hell, where they’ll end up in the ring of greed.
He’s talked to the old gods, though, when Beomgyu wasn’t with him. A soul that has lived much more than that of a normal sinner’s is a treasure, a rarity that fuels the fires of hell more than a thousand thieves could.
Beomgyu doesn’t deserve eternity in hell. He was a light burning through centuries, and Taehyun will never let that flame burn out, not if he can help it.
When the winds come to claim them, Taehyun steps forward and offers a thousand more years of his life to them, in exchange for bringing Beomgyu to heaven. The storm grows stronger as he shouts into it, his voice grating more raw as he receives no response.
A strong gust of wind knocks Taehyun back, where he falls, and falls, and falls.
When he wakes, it’s to a blue sky and white clouds and despair settling into his gut. No.
“Beomgyu!”
There’s no response for the hours Taehyun feels he’s screamed. His throat starts to burn, his eyes water, and his nose runs wet, and still, he rasps out Beomgyu’s name with all his heart.
“He is not here,” a melodic voice resounds around him when he cannot make any more sounds. “Like you, he made a final bargain.”
A woman dressed in white cloth appears from afar. She points out into the distance, and Taehyun follows her finger with his eyes to see a mirror, only this one shows a crowd of people dressed in white. They move around lazily on a bed of clouds. The mirror focuses on a black-haired man, stumbling up to his feet. Taehyun takes a sharp breath.
Beomgyu.
Beomgyu is in purgatory.
Taehyun feels so stupid. He should have known Beomgyu, his sweet, compassionate, Beomgyu with too much love, would have done something like this.
“His soul was the purest we had encountered in a while,” the woman says. “He asked for you to be forgiven.”
Taehyun chokes out a sob, and then another one. The sounds tear out of him anew, and the angel leaves him there, on the edge of heaven.
* * *
Fifty years into his service pass by quickly. He visits Beomgyu often, introducing himself again every time, and has a polite conversation. Taehyun both loves and hates the way Beomgyu speaks to him so kindly, his eyes always a little hazy and nose scrunched as he tries to remember what Taehyun says.
Fifty years into his service until the ache in his heart bleeds through his skin and nearly paralyzes him with anguish.
He travels down to Purgatory for one last time, to say good bye. He never should have held on this long.
He lands in front of Beomgyu, who’s tossing flowers over the edge of the cloud platform.
“I can’t see you anymore,” Taehyun murmurs. He watches Beomgyu’s eyebrows knit together as he tries to remember Taehyun.
“I’m... I’m sorry about that,” Beomgyu stutters. “Have I done something wrong?”
Taehyun smiles. “You have never.” He reaches to his back, to the sides, and slowly tears his wings off. Beomgyu’s eyes widen and he reaches out to him, maybe to stop him, maybe to stop the silver blood that flows out from his wound, out of instinct. Taehyun gently takes one of Beomgyu’s hands and places a kiss to his fingertips.
He drops his wings in Beomgyu’s hands and walks to the edge of the platform. Finally, he sees the light of recognition enter Beomgyu’s eyes, watches as the love of his lifetime stretches out an arm to stop him as tears start running down his cheeks, but Taehyun is already leaning backwards, falling off and away from reach.
“You deserved to fly, my love.”